Special Pages

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Hottest thing since sliced bread?

Annual College of Bishops meeting kicks off with a reflective day, the first half led by Brother Samuel SSF. We contemplate the need to be hungry if we are to be fed, that is to have empty space in our lives (including our diaries). Amazing varieties of fresh bread are possible. Aerated, non-nutritional, sanitized loaves rather obscure the possibilities.

Samuel brought us a poem written by David Scott for Hillfield Friary Families’ Camp:

A Long way from Bread

We have come so far from bread.Rarely do we hear the clatter of the mill wheel;see the flour in every cranny,the shaking down of the sack, the chalk on the door,the rats, the race, the pool,baking day, and the old loaves:cob, cottage, plaited, brick.

We have come so far from bread.Once the crock said ‘BREAD’and the bread was what was there,and the family’s arm went deeper doen each dayto find it, and the crust was favoured.

We have come so far from Bread.terrifying is the breach between wheat and table,wheat and bread, bread and what goes for bread.Loaves now come in regiments, so that loafis not the word. Hlafis one of the oldest words we have.

I go on about breadbecause it was to breadthat jesus trustedthe meaning he had of himself.It was an honour for the breadto be the knot in the Lord’s handkerchiefreminding him about himself. So,O bread, breakable;O bread, given;O bread, a blessing;count yourself lucky bread.

Not that I am against wafers,especially the ones produced under steamfrom some hidden nunnerywith our lord crucified into them.They are at least unleavened, and fit the hand,without remainder, but it is stilla long way from bread.better for each household to have its own bread,daily, enough and to spare,dough the size of a rolled towel,for feeding angels unawares.Then if the bread is holy,All that has to do with bread is holy;Board, knife, cupboard,So that the gap between all things is closedIn our attention to the bread of the day.’

I know that“man cannot live on bread alone.”I say, let us get the bread right.

I once sat at a table with Croats, Serbs and Macedonians, and asked them whet the word was for bread. The resulting dispute about word and pronunciation (from those who had supposedly shared a common language) showed the Balkan problem in miniature!

Child of God by adoption and grace, husband of Lucy, father of five, jumped-up vicar (Area Bishop of Buckingham).
Born Edinburgh. Deacon 1979, Priest 1980, Bishop 2003. Cambridge MA, Oxford DPhil — ‘I am a doctor, but not the kind that helps people.’ I trained for ordained ministry at Wycliffe Hall. I have worked in various C of E contexts, urban and suburban, as well as in prison.